A Rule-Based Energy Management Strategy for Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle (PHEV)

Hybrid Electric Vehicles (HEV) combine the power from an electric motor with that from an internal combustion engine to propel the vehicle. The HEV electric motor is typically powered by a battery pack through power electronics. The HEV battery is recharged either by the engine or from regenerative braking. The electric drive mode is very limited for an HEV due to the limited battery power. A more powerful battery will increase the electric drive range of the vehicle, thus improving fuel economy. However, the battery will need to be recharged using an electric outlet since the regenerative braking and limited engine usage will not be sufficient to fully recharge the larger battery pack. In this paper, a rule-based energy management strategy for a Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle (PHEV) is presented. Since large amount of electric energy is stored in the battery from the electric power grid, the fuel consumption is reduced significantly as compared with HEV counterpart. The proposed energy management strategy is implemented on a PHEV model in ADVISOR and the model is then simulated for a number of predefined drive cycles. The proposed PHEV algorithm results are compared with those for HEV with similar battery capacity as PHEV.